Changing hard drive XP (XP Home SP2)

Can someone help? Not sure if this should be here or in Hardware, but it seems to be an XP issue. I want to change my current drive C: to a new larger HD; I have copied everything to the new drive using Norton Ghost, and jumpered the new drive as master and the old one as slave, but it won't boot properly from the new drive unless the old drive is still physically present, and it is still reading that as Drive C: even though it is a slave. If I remove the old drive (physically unplugging it) all that happens is it gets to the XP logon screen, but no user logon appears, and it then does nothing at all. Setting BIOS to recognise both drives (on auto) makes no difference - hence I think it is an XP issue. Somehow I need to tell XP that the new drive is C: so it will boot correctly from that, without the old one needing to be present. Not sure what to do next!

Re: Changing hard drive XP (XP Home SP2)

Are you really, really sure the two drives are correctly jumpered as master and slave? You've got to be careful about "cable select" plus some drives, like Western Digital, have a specific jumpering for something called master-single or something like that. If you've truly got the jumpering correct, the machine SHOULD boot from your new drive UNLESS Ghost doesn't set the partition "active." I don't use Ghost, so I don't know if that's an extra step you have to take or not. (All the while I'm saying this, I have to have my <img src=/S/crossfingers.gif border=0 alt=crossfingers width=17 height=16> that you really did get a good image and restore of the old drive!)

Re: Changing hard drive XP (XP Home SP2)

Yes, I'm sure about the jumpering - I checked the settings for each drive carefully, plus they show up correctly in Device Manager. However, I don't know whether Ghost has copied the utility sector, or whether that's necessary. It looks as though it says it has, but I can't be certain. I could remove the old C: drive and set up the new one with XP from scratch, then restore from Ghost, but I don't know if that would make any difference, as Ghost would then presumably overwrite everything there anyway. Is there some way I can "tell" XP that the new drive is C:, rather than E: as it is at the moment?

Re: Changing hard drive XP (XP Home SP2)

Lessee, somewhere there's a thread similar to this one, but while I'm looking, I suppose you could look in Disk Management (My Computer, Manage, Disk Management). See if you can right-click on the drive that is shown as C: and change its letter to something else and then change the new one to C: - I've not tried that so I don't know...

Re: Changing hard drive XP (XP Home SP2)

Well, you've moved me forward, though I'm not sure yet how far! I set it all up so the new drive is master/boot and then tried changing drive letters. It started well, but then wouldn't allow me to save the change from C: because that disk has a page file. It was also clear from the disk management section that te new drive is indeed the boot drive, but it seems that the pagefile is the issue - or is just confusing the issue. Ghost should have copied the pagefile as well, so the new drive should also have one, but it just described it as boot and healthy. Frustrating!